Oklahoma State Auditor Testifies At Health Department Hearing

Oklahoma state auditor Gary Jones testified Thursday that whistleblowers warned his office of possible fraud months before the State Department of Health nearly missed payroll due to alleged mishandling of $30 million dollars.

Jones provided a detailed timeline describing early efforts to unravel how funds were mismanaged, who knew and when. He told the house investigative committee that an unnamed health department manager came forward in late July to alert his office of financial mismanagement at the state health department. Within days, four more employees came forward.

“They were spending within the limits of what their budget was, the problem is the revenue was not coming in as projected and it appears that was intentionally inflated to continue the spending.”

Jones’ testimony suggests that Preston Doerflinger, then the head of the Office of Management and Enterprise Services, knew about financial problems at the health department earlier than he told lawmakers this week.

Martinez: Sept. 1 was the day you realized you needed to reach out to OMES. Jones: Yes. I had never seen anything get to this level. I notified Preston (Doerflinger head of OMES and interim health director)

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After a nearly two hour closed-door meeting on Tuesday, the Oklahoma State Board of Health voted to fire the department’s accountability director. The move comes as investigators and lawmakers probe the alleged mismanagement of $30 million dollars at the state agency.

The nine-member board voted to fire Jay Holland from his post as Director of the Office of Accountability Systems. The position is charged with keeping the board and health commissioner informed of any suspected fraud or abuse.

This Week in Oklahoma Politics, KOSU's Michael Cross talks with Republican Political Consultant Neva Hill and ACLU Oklahoma Executive Director Ryan Kiesel about the Oklahoma Health Care Authority cutting Medicaid reimbursement rates 6% to most health care providers and 1% to nursing homes while the Attorney General, State Auditor and even the House of Representatives begin investigations of possible fiscal mismanagement at the Department of Health and lawmakers await an announcement on another special session to deal with the budget shortfall.